Ismaili Ta'wil of al-Dawr — The Prophetic Cycle: How Ismaili Cosmology Understands Religious History as Structured by Seven Successive Cycles (Dawrs), Each Inaugurated by a Natiq (Speaking Prophet) and His Asas (Inner Trustee), with the Present Cycle Being the Sixth and the Seventh Reserved for the Final Qiyama

In Ismaili ta'wil, al-Dawr (الدَّور — The Cycle, The Age; *dawr* [pl. *adwar*]: cycle, period, recurring sequence; from *d-w-r*: to turn, rotate, recur; the cosmological structure: Ismaili thought divides religious history into seven prophetic cycles [adwar]; each cycle is inaugurated by a Natiq [Speaking Prophet, *natiq*: the one who speaks, declares] paired with an Asas [Foundation, inner trustee]; the Natiq brings the zahir of a new revelation; the Asas holds the batin/ta'wil; [1] The First Dawr: Adam as Natiq; the Asas is often identified as Seth/Sheth or another primordial trustee; [2] The Second Dawr: Noah as Natiq; Shem as Asas; [3] The Third Dawr: Abraham as Natiq; Ishmael [or Isaac in some accounts] as Asas; [4] The Fourth Dawr: Moses as Natiq; Aaron (or Joshua) as Asas; [5] The Fifth Dawr: Jesus as Natiq; Simon Peter (Shamun al-Safa) as Asas; [6] The Sixth Dawr [the present dawr]: Muhammad as Natiq; 'Ali ibn Abi Talib as Asas; the sixth dawr extends from Muhammad through the line of Fatimid/Tayyibi Imams to the present — the current Imam holds the ta'wil of the sixth dawr; [7] The Seventh Dawr: the cycle of the Qa'im al-Qiyama [the Riser of Resurrection]; the seventh dawr will complete the cycle of religious history; in the seventh dawr, the ta'wil becomes fully manifest — the batin becomes zahir, the hidden becomes visible; the relationship between dawrs: each successive Natiq's revelation deepens and contextualizes the previous cycle's revelation; the zahir of each cycle is different, but the batin is the same eternal ta'wil expressed in different forms; Moses' Torah and Muhammad's Quran differ in zahir but share the same cosmological batin; the Imam's role in the sixth dawr: the present Imam is the living custodian of the sixth dawr's ta'wil; each age's Imam holds this dawr's ta'wil not as a fixed deposit but as a living transmission; the dawri number seven: seven is not an arbitrary count; it maps to the seven planets of classical cosmology; the seven-dawr structure is itself a cosmological encoding of the relationship between celestial and earthly order; the end of the sixth dawr: the Ismaili tradition does not specify when the sixth dawr ends; it continues as long as the Imam transmits the sixth dawr's ta'wil to believers; the eighth dawr: some Ismaili texts speak of an eighth dawr beyond the qiyama; the 'return' after completion; cyclical infinity beyond the seventh) is the historical structure of Ismaili prophetic theology.